Highlighted Internship: Bekki Cooper, Curating Intern at the Center for Naval History in Washington D.C.
 “Before the summer I knew I wanted to work in museums, but I had never done curation before, I’d never done design,” says senior and Springfield, Virginia native Bekki Cooper. “I was worried that I wouldn’t be good at it,” she admits. But after an internship this past summer at the Center for Naval History, she’s confident in her abilities and her choice to follow that path.
The Center for Naval History in Washington D.C., located on an actual naval base, is the official history program of the Department of the Navy and includes a museum, art gallery, research library, and archives. With funding from Barnard’s Amy Lai '89 Internship Grant, Cooper interned there for 13 weeks. In that time, she had a variety of tasks: she answered questions from the general public and staffed the center’s biannual Naval History Conference as well as the receptions for high-ranking officers who were retiring (including one for Rear Admiral Martin, one of the highest ranking female officers in the American armed forces). She also had the opportunity to curate an exhibit on Underwater Archaeology. Having taken Early American Maritime History at Barnard the previous semester, Cooper had a base of knowledge that helped her feel more prepared for the tasks.
For the Underwater Archaeology exhibit project, the museum handed Cooper the topic, a space, and a list of usable artifacts, but gave her a fairly blank slate as she designed the overarching themes of the exhibit. She was asked to write all of the corresponding captions as well, which meant that she worked on issues large and small: “You pick not only what goes where, what captions go with them. What are the bigger captions? How are they arranged thematically? What color are the walls?,” she says. “Designing the exhibit and writing text requires a great deal of research, so you have something to say about pieces in context.”
Cooper says the amount of responsibility was exciting: “It meant the sky was the limit until they told us otherwise.” And when they did tell her otherwise, when her ideas weren’t approved, Cooper says she learned another valuable workplace lesson: “I learned how to take direction and not take it personally. If they say something is wrong, that doesn’t mean that you’re bad or bad at this job, it’s just not what they had intended.” Cooper also credits the internship with exposing her to a number of interesting historical artifacts on the base, including a chair in which Abe Lincoln once sat.
Although the exhibit won’t open until January, Cooper began to see her vision take shape at the end of the summer. “The coolest part was the cases—seeing them build the cases I designed,” she says.
After graduation, Cooper hopes to get a PhD in history and then work at a museum or historic house as a curator.
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